Azalia Snail is an American avant-garde musician who was part of the 1990s "lo-fi" movement.
Her debut album was
Snailbait (1990), followed by
Burnt Sienna (1992),
Fumarole Rising (1993) and, collaborating with Hail's Susanne Lewis as Hail/Snail,
How to Live with a Tiger (1993). Subsequent albums include
Blue Danube (1995),
Deep Motif (1996),
Breaker Mortar (1998),
Soft Bloom (1999). She has also done music for film and television.
External links
Snail, AzaliaSnail, Azalia
?An all-American original who reinvents pop craft??
John Payne, LA Weekly
?Snail outdoes the classics and becomes a classic herself?
Piero Scaruffi, The History of Rock Music
?the absolute queen of hypnotic, otherworldly benevolence?.one of our most undervalued treasures?
Joe S. Harrington, MAGNET
Azalia Snail has recorded 11 critically-acclaimed albums, gaining recognition as a pioneering force in the underground "lo-fi" movement of the 1990's. Many influential labels have released her music, including Sub Pop and Dark Beloved Cloud, who launched their label with a split 7? by Azalia and SEBADOH. She also filmed and assembled Super-8 films as backdrop to live performances. In 1996, she was commissioned by MTV to score the music for the program "Ain't Nuthin' But A She Thing". She has also composed music for several indie features and short films.
She has toured consistently throughout the USA and Europe with such acts as LOW, SEBADOH, THE BLACK HEART PROCESSION, SPORTSGUITAR, and ILLYAH KURYAHKIN.
Azalia moved to California in 2000, and won that year's LA Weekly Music Award for Best New Genre.
NEUMUSIC review Jan 30, 2006 Azalia Snail has been making her uniquely sweet, viscous, noise-inflected, tempo-bending psychedelia for almost two decades, recording a dozen or so albums between 1990 and 2001 on labels including Funky Mushroom and Dark Beloved Cloud. Now after a five-year break, she's back with a disc on Silver Lake's experimental True Classical Records, a dense haze of swooning vocals and seething synths cut by abrasive swaths of indie guitar mayhem. The music has its share of discordant moments and harsh textures, but somehow these are enveloped in a softening sheen; as Snail sings in the opening track, it is "Heavy mental/ Honeysuckle gentle." The sounds incorporated into Snail's slow-moving, trippy meditations include both traditional and unusual rock-band instruments. Snail accompanies herself on guitar, keyboards and percussion. She is backed primarily by Gary Ramon (once of the British psyche band Sun Dial), who punctuates her mind-warping soundscapes with bass and drums. Brian Cassels and Peter Wulff add trumpet and sax to a number of the cuts, while Tanya Haden (most likely Petra Haden's sister) plays cello on "Disintegration." The trumpet melody that emerges from tangled guitars and buzzing sax on "Casuarina Trees," along with "Mint Stallion," one of two pure instrumentals, is mesmerizing, pure and dreamlike. The songs with words are necessarily more like pop, though pop of a loosely-structured and free-spirited sort. Snail's words are elliptical and elusive, hinting at mind states rather than telling stories. "Alcazar," one of the disc's best cuts, seems to be about the limits of materialism, while "Scenescape" extols the virtues of being oneself. There's a lilt and distortion to the music that enlivens these well-worn topics and makes them seem fresh and relevant. The disc's longest track, "Distintegration," is also a highlight, combining in one mind-changing interval all the things that make Azalia Snail so interesting. The song opens with a slow, percolating electro beat, then weaves in long slow tones of trumpet and saxophone, sometimes together, sometimes in tonal conflict. Snail's ethereal voice drifts in after about a minute, with abstract, koan-like verses. Snail has, at least in the past, used psychedelic drugs to hone her artistic vision, and these words seem to come from an alternate, non-linear reality: "A dent takes its shape, is reversed, then erased/ Developing a sheen like seashells disgraced/ Dissolve and distill till nothing's left/ Little to lose when you consider your theft." The whole thing coalesces into waves of shifting sensation, a miasma of sound shot through with sudden piercing shafts of light. The final, uncredited track is a cover of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," tripped-out, drum-machine-embellished and wrapped in reverbed haze. Snail finds unexpected mystery in this disco-era song, slowing it down and turning it into a minimalist chant. It's not entirely successful, and certainly not as interesting as her originals, but it does make you consider the song in a new light. There's a hypnotic quality to these songs, a smooth surface that rests on layers of voice, keyboard tones, brass and saxophones. It is hard to hear the components of any given song as they move in and out of focus, yet they combine in a lithe and nuanced whole.
THE AZALiA SNAiL STORY
California beckoned me at a time when I felt I needed open sky and a whole lot of sun. I was coming here a lot on tour, and entertained the notion of being here more often;. Originally I was going to make a double coast existence, but I found that once I was here, I didn?t want to go back to NYC so much. As much as I devoured and was completely enamored of NYC, I was dismayed at a lot of the changes taking placethere. Gone were so many of my favorite restaurants and hang-outs. It was, in quick order, becoming too much like the suburbia I dreaded as a desperate teenager. It seems to be more a playground for the spoiled and the overcompensated. Los Angeles still has sections of bohemian splendour, or a at least a taste of that. I can get in my little car and cruise up to the foothills in a few minutes, taking in an intoxicating view, and getting away from it all. One should keep in mind that it is possible to keep your distance from the mundane and shallow victims that congregate in Los Angeles more popularly known arenas.
I began my music as a soundtrack to my own experiemental film INSIDE HER MINDS (filmed by the bizarre and reticent Tim Ray). I couldn?t help but visualize images with music. Way before the rock video took its form, music was utilized most grandly by fillmmakers, first with the silents and on to the fabulous musicals (my mother took us kids to all of the revivals or we watched them on television); and continuing with my favorite era of cinema, 60?s and 70?s groudbreakers like Hal Ashby and Robert Altman.Merging music and film is an irresistible combination for me. I should also mention Christopher G. Frieri, who asked me to score three of his horror/cult features for him.
Europe. Another subject that whirls me in the direction of paradise. How can I praise it enough? With its immaculate history, culture, disparate differences, appreciation for art for art?s sake (as opposed to America?s obsession with the dollar/profit margin)?beautiful scenery, gregarious people, splendorous foods, I am intoxicated by the multitude of charns various countries offer me. If they like me in turn, that would only seem fair. Perhaps USA will one day be proud of their underground flowery crustacean, but that is not for me to say.
I?ve always created music exactly the way I wanted to at that moment of creation. I have never compromised; I have never had to. BLUE DANUBE was especially daring, if you will, because each song was created in its own anonymous tuning, and recorded immediately to four-track upon its inception. I can never play these songs live because I have no idea what these tunings are anymore. Only the words were written in my notebook.All the instruments (some quite odd) were played by me without any planning whatsoever. I was lucky that the German label, Normal , allowed me to release it exactly as I created it. The British label Garden of Delights released it on vinly as ESCAPE MAKER with some of the songs as instrumentals. As for the title track, It was a plea for the love I had at the time to love me the way I loved him (also wtihout compromise) ? it was an impossible task for him. Much of the album deals with the disparity of realizing I was with a rather elusive human.
I own all my rights, and I own all my wrongs. Enough said.
Colloration has always been completely beneficial and appealing to me.I wouldn?t have made all this music without the contribution of so many amazing people. Some of my favorites: Pall Jenkinsfrom The Black Heart Procession (he played on ?Unalligned Sky? on BLUE DANUBE) who has such an alluring sadness in his soul. Alan Sparhawk from LOW, a band that never ceases to hypnotize and sooth my soul. Alan played the mellotron lead on ?Purr on a Gyre? on BREAKER MORTAR). In the early 90?s, it was also a treat to jam with Beck Hansen, who now has become a star out of reach. I played zither on stage with him in Minneapolis (the ?Purple Rain? nightclub, actually); he played harmonica with me and Trumans Water in Los Angeles. Speaking of Trumans, our album ?Stampone? still stands as a unique freeform rock/jazz experiment that surely does not sound like anything else. I had a terrific time playing with my Swiss pals SPORTSGUITAR on our SWISS BLISS sessions. I still dig the album I made with Susanne Lewis as HAIL/SNAIL ?How to Live With a Tiger.? You asked about Supreme Dicks. Daniel Oxenberg is a superior guitar player who toured me for some years in the 1990s. He plays some melodic leads on my album BURNT SIENNA. I never worked with any of the other Dicks, but I do love many of their songs from the 90s.
Most outstanding gig was Berlin for the first time, I think it was 1995. I played in an old squat in the old eastern zone, Lychenerstrasse 56. The audience was unbelievably enthusiastic, kept cheering for more until I pulled a Bruce Springsteen and played for over three hours. Inviting kids from the crowd to grab an instrument and play along, I felt like I could do anything and everything without regret. I?ve become acquainted with several of those that were there, including the lovely Kitty Solaris. She has told me she was inspired from that show to play music of her own! What better compliment can one get? Second best could be Paris around the same time, I took on my guitar in a way I never had before, concocting Hendrixian dynamics (I really don?t know where I got the guts) ? Les Instants Chavires, not far from where Henry Miller resided. Maybe that?swhy I got the nerve.
I am so grateful for all the experiences I have had touring, recording, watching other bands play, listening, appreciating, dedicating myself to many art practitioners. I could not exist without art. Life would be hollow and meaningless without art. One can cringe at the amount of ?bad art?,but one can also say that we need all of it, the lesser to know the better, the mediocre to know the truly divine. To create is to intoxicate.
My newest album AVEC AMOUR could be my hookiest effort to date.There?s some quite rocking and, dare I say, structured songs. I think it still has my unmistable sound. I wouldn?t know how to make it sound like anyone else, and why should I? Take it or leave it; it?s all I can do. I?m writing fiction as well. There just may be a movie being made quite soon from a script I wrote this year. I?m venturing into making videos for other bands as well. I?ve directed several this year: one for my song ?Honeysuckle? filmed in the ravishingly photogenic Forest Lawn Cemetery; for my favorite LA band, THE MOVIES, kind of a spin on the movie ?Secretary?, for a majestic song by THE SUNDOWNERS, an ode to the beauty of the Malibu shore; another one for THE PICK-UP STICKS called ?Open Fire?. All accomplished on a mini-DV camera. Vastly easier than my old-fashioned way on an old Super-8!
Azalia Snail will remain true to her notions of exploration and adventure, whether it be sonic grooves or visual allure. Hope to continue to inspire others in their own independent and invigorating investigations.
